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The Center for Research In Syntax, Semantics & Phonology (CRISSP) in Brussels is pleased to host the 15th annual Conference of the Student Organization of Linguistics in Europe, from January 11 to 13, 2007.

ConSOLE is organized by a different European university every year and provides a forum for students of linguistics from all over the world to present their research.

FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS

Abstracts are solicited from all areas of generative linguistics including but not limited to phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. ConSOLE is a conference on theoretical linguistics, so papers in fields like psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics or phonetics will also be welcome if they have a theoretical orientation.

GUIDELINES FOR ABSTRACTS

Abstracts should not exceed two pages, including data, references and diagrams. Abstracts should be typed in at least 11-point font, with one-inch margins (letter-size; 8''1/2 by 11'' or A4) and a maximum of 50 lines of text per page. Abstracts must be anonymous and submissions are limited to 1 individual and 1 joint abstract per author. We will only accept abstracts by students (i.e., people not having defended a PhD. by September 15th, 2006).

Only electronic submissions will be accepted. Send name, affiliation, e-mail, mailing address and title of the paper in the body of the message. The anonymous abstract should be sent as an attachment, and only abstracts in pdf format will be accepted. Abstracts should be sent to consolecrissp.be.

The organization of the 15th Annual Conference of the Students Organization of Linguistics in Europe will do its best to offer travel support for presenters without sufficient funds, to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

CONTACT

Should you have any other questions or comments, feel free to contact the local organisers at consolecrissp.be or visit the CRISSP-website: www.crissp.be

The Evidence of Projecting D in The Initial State of L2 English Grammars by Chinese-Speaking L2 English Learners

A number of hypotheses on second language acquisition have been proposed by theoretical linguists during the 1990s. A controversial issue is if functional categories exist in the initial state of L2 grammars or not. It is known that Chinese is a [-ART] language, which is not like English with article system. The interesting issue is how L2 learners whose native language like Japanese or Chinese that lacks English article system acquire functional categories D of L2 grammars (White, 2003). It is suggested that even thought Chinese does not have article system like English, the functional categories like classifier exist in Chinese (Tang, 1990; Li, 1998). When Chinese-speaking L2 learners of English learn English, it could be possible for them to transfer the use of classifier system in the English L2 grammars. So far, just a few studies have tackled with this issue. Thus, it is needed for further investigation. In the study, there are forty 19-to-21-year-old Taiwanese college students (20 females and 20 males) participating into the study. The participants were divided into two English proficiency levels, low and high, by the Michigan Listening Comprehension Test, and were asked to perform an oral story-telling task. Bickterton's (1981) semantic wheel model, [±Specific Referent (±SR)] and [±Assumed Known to the Hearer (±HK)], was adopted as data analysis. And, TLU (Target-like Use) was selected for measuring accuracy rate of article use. The results found that the L2 learners at the high proficiency levels used English articles correctly than the low proficiency levels did, suggesting that the advanced Chinese-speaking L2 English learners can gradually reset the parameter of L2 grammars in acquiring the functional category D that is absent in the L1. The result contradicts No Parameter Resetting Hypothesis, supporting L2 learners can access to partial UG of L2 grammars. In addition, the interlanguage data showed there are some interesting errors made by the Chinese-speaking L2 English learners, and theoretical discussions were provided in the study. For instance, the misuse of numeral one for English indefinite article a/an was found in the data, implying that it is influenced from the usage of Chinese classifier system 'yige'. The comparison on syntactic positions and semantic interpretations between Chinese 'yige' and English indefinite a/an was discussed. And, it is argued that the syntactic behavior of Chinese classifier system 'yige' is more complex than that of English indefinite article a/an, and 'yige' has more wider distribution than 'a/an'. Furthermore, an interesting error made by the L2 learners at low proficiency levels is the placement of definite article the before proper name, the Cinderella. The misuse of the Cinderella for Cinderella reflects the existence of projecting functional category D in the initial state of L2 grammars by the Chinese speaking L2 learners. And, it is argued that the projection of D could be universal linguistic phenomenon by the L2 learners even for those whose native language lacks clear English-type articles. Also, there is significant difference in the misuse of the Cinderella for Cinderella between the group of low proficiency level and that of high proficiency level. The group of low proficiency levels made the errors highly than the group of high proficiency level did, implying that the Chinese-speaking L2 learners can gradually acquire the usage of English proper names with the increase of proficiency level.